World war Z: an oral history of the Zombie war(c.1) by Max Brooks

Author:Max Brooks
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-01-21T11:25:30.444480+00:00

AROUND THE WORLD, AND ABOVE

Province of Bohemia, The European Union

[It is called Kost, “the Bone,” and what it lacks in beauty it more than makes up for in strength. Appearing to grow out of its solid rock foundation, this fourteenth-century Gothic “Hrad” casts an intimidating shadow over the Plakanek Valley, an image David Allen Forbes is keen to capture with his pencil and paper. This will be his second book, Castles of the Zombie War: The Continent. The Englishman sits under a tree, his patchwork clothing and long Scottish sword already adding to this Arthurian setting. He abruptly switches gears as I arrive, from serene artist to painfully nervous storyteller.]

When I say that the New World doesn’t have our history of fixed fortifications, I’m only referring to North America. There are the Spanish coastal fortresses, naturally, along the Caribbean, and the ones we and the French built in the Lesser Antilles. Then there are the Inca ruins in the Andes, although they never experienced direct sieges. Also, when I say “North America,” that does not include the Mayan and Aztec ruins in Mexico-that business with the Battle of Kukulcan, although I suppose that’s Toltec, now, isn’t it, when those chaps held off so many Zed Heads on the steps of that bloody great pyramid. So when I say “New World,” I’m really referring to the United States and Canada.

This isn’t an insult, you understand, please don’t take it as such. You’re both young countries, you don’t have the history of institutional anarchy we Europeans suffered after the fall of Rome. You’ve always had standing, national governments with the forces capable of enforcing law and order.

I know that wasn’t true during your westward expansion or your civil war, and please, I’m not discounting those pre-Civil War fortresses or the experiences of those defending them. I’d one day like to visit Fort Jefferson. I hear those who survived there had quite a time of it. All I’m saying is, in Europe’s history, we had almost a millennia of chaos where sometimes the concept of physical safety stopped at the battlements of your lord’s castle. Does that make sense? I’m not making sense; can we start again?

No, no, this is fine. Please, continue.

You’ll edit out all the daft bits.

You got it.

Right then. Castles. Well…I don’t want for a moment to overstate their importance for the general war effort. In fact, when you compare them to any other type of fixed fortification, modern, modified, and so forth, their contribution does seem quite negligible, unless you’re like me, and that contribution was what saved your life.

This doesn’t mean that a mighty fortress was naturally our God. For starters, you must understand the inherent difference between a castle and a palace. A lot of so-called castles were really nothing more than just great impressive homes, or else had been converted to such after their defensive value had become obsolete. These once impregnable bastions now had so many windows cut into the ground floor that it would have taken forever to brick them all up again.

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